Trust corrects itself after ticking off

AN AMENDED press release was issued by Shetland Charitable Trust on Thursday to placate trustees upset that the organisation was misleading the public.

At Thursday’s trust meeting, independent trustee John Scott was furious about a statement released to the local media stating the trust “will raise part of the funds to develop the Viking Energy wind farm”.

He demanded a public apology, saying the wording “pre-empted a decision” which amounted to a “deception of the public”.

Fellow trustees agreed, with Betty Fullerton saying this had to be admitted as an error.

Mr Scott’s intervention came as trustees gathered to listen to a presentation by Lloyds Bank’s director of renewable energy Richard Simon-Lewis on financing green energy projects.

He said trust chairman Bill Manson should take a “stronger interest” in what the management was doing.

But after an afternoon of hectic behind the scenes activity, it emerged that the incriminating sentence in last week’s press release was never used, because the local media was fully aware of the finer details of the project.

As no damage had been done, the trust simply re-issued a corrected version of the press release, this time saying: “As Shetland Charitable Trust may raise part of the funds to develop the Viking Energy wind farm, the Trustees have been keen to keep abreast of the financial aspects of the wind farm.”

Mr Scott said he was content as all he had wanted was to get “the facts right”.